Joy, calm, connection and hope make life feel worthwhile. Day to day difficulties can be tolerated as part of a richer experience. Adversity is borne through reliance on trusted coping skills. These are common aspirations but through the relationships that created us, circumstances that entrap us or appetites that never feel satisfied, pain overwhelms. My aim is to assist people to see how previously tried solutions to the problems of living and relating have worn out their usefulness. Through exploring thinking that may have failed to yield the desired results, I draw out people’s unique resilience—the ability to tap a core sense of worth—in order to foster change.

Through years of working with a diverse range of people facing addiction, illness, isolation, despair, anxiety, anger, grief and loss, my approach is to match the treatment to the patient. I use psychodynamic therapy where formative relationships have molded unsatisfactory consequences, interpersonal psychotherapy where ways of relating leave a feeling of being misunderstood and cognitive interventions for habituated ways of thinking that cause distress. My attitude of humble inquiry that simply asks, “How do you need help?” allows patients to share pain and define wellness. Identifying, supporting and drawing out mental, spiritual and physical strength nurtures a therapeutic relationship focused on freeing all the possibilities contained in the present moment.

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with training in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Interpersonal Psychotherapy, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Problem Solving Therapy and Suicide Risk and prevention. Whether in my clinical focus of working with men and their atypical presentations of depression or in addiction as a drug counselor, central to my recovery work is the necessity of repairing broken and damaged attachments.